I had high expectations for this. Having seen the pilot, I honestly do not know what to think.
Based on the previews, I knew I have to expect something more in veins of "300" than something resembling a realistic historical movie. However, this being a series and all, I hoped that the stylistic approach and reliance on nudity and gore will be complemented with a good story and interesting characters.
What I got was a prolonged computer game cutscene, although sadly I was never asked to grab my controller and do some fighting on my own. Throughout the whole episode I was served with endless slow motion, more then obvious green screen sets and buckets of CGI blood. EXTREMELY fake-looking CGI blood, the one that looks sparkly and completely wrong shade of red, gushes all over the place yet evaporates in mid-air. After the eighth time my TV screen was bathed in red pixels, I gave up on taking the series seriously. After the twenty-first time, I was exhausted. This is neither stylized nor cool - it just serves to make suspending disbelief an utterly impossible feat to accomplish.
Interspersed between the rather silly yet endless fight scenes is some resemblance of the plot and quite a lot of breasts (with occasional gift of full frontal nudity, female persuasion). Breasts are nice, but I have Internet for that. Plot is the beginning of the Spartacus story, already seen in, well, "Spartacus", or even in "Gladiator" in some fashion. Only this time it is accompanied with rather theatrical acting, not really bad per se, but also reimbursing the computer game cutscene feeling.
All in all, this is Spartacus for the XBox generation, the only problem being that the age group that would enjoy it the most is the one not permitted to see it because of its rating. On the other hand, kids have already seen that stuff in modern computer games, done better and in interactive fashion for that matter.
However, I am not the one who will dismiss a series based on a bad pilot. I wasn't (too) bored with it and I guess I have at least some interest in seeing what happens next. But if it continues in the same fashion (and keeps insisting with not giving me a chance to actually control Spartacus with my gamepad), I guess I could live my life quite happily without ever seeing the ultimate fate of this particular iteration of Spartacus.
Based on the previews, I knew I have to expect something more in veins of "300" than something resembling a realistic historical movie. However, this being a series and all, I hoped that the stylistic approach and reliance on nudity and gore will be complemented with a good story and interesting characters.
What I got was a prolonged computer game cutscene, although sadly I was never asked to grab my controller and do some fighting on my own. Throughout the whole episode I was served with endless slow motion, more then obvious green screen sets and buckets of CGI blood. EXTREMELY fake-looking CGI blood, the one that looks sparkly and completely wrong shade of red, gushes all over the place yet evaporates in mid-air. After the eighth time my TV screen was bathed in red pixels, I gave up on taking the series seriously. After the twenty-first time, I was exhausted. This is neither stylized nor cool - it just serves to make suspending disbelief an utterly impossible feat to accomplish.
Interspersed between the rather silly yet endless fight scenes is some resemblance of the plot and quite a lot of breasts (with occasional gift of full frontal nudity, female persuasion). Breasts are nice, but I have Internet for that. Plot is the beginning of the Spartacus story, already seen in, well, "Spartacus", or even in "Gladiator" in some fashion. Only this time it is accompanied with rather theatrical acting, not really bad per se, but also reimbursing the computer game cutscene feeling.
All in all, this is Spartacus for the XBox generation, the only problem being that the age group that would enjoy it the most is the one not permitted to see it because of its rating. On the other hand, kids have already seen that stuff in modern computer games, done better and in interactive fashion for that matter.
However, I am not the one who will dismiss a series based on a bad pilot. I wasn't (too) bored with it and I guess I have at least some interest in seeing what happens next. But if it continues in the same fashion (and keeps insisting with not giving me a chance to actually control Spartacus with my gamepad), I guess I could live my life quite happily without ever seeing the ultimate fate of this particular iteration of Spartacus.